In light of the U.S. State Department’s new, bigoted, biased, anti-Semitic, Israel-hating error-ridden terrorism report, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) calls on Secretary of State Tillerson to resign.

This Tillerson State Department Report blames Israel for Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks on innocent Jews and Americans, ignores and whitewashes the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) “pay to slay” payments to Arabs to murder Jews, and among other travesties – contradicts both President Trump’s insightful Riyadh speech, and Ambassador Haley’s outstanding work at the United Nations.

President Trump’s courageous speech in Riyadh placed the blame for terrorist attacks against innocent Jews, Christians and Muslims squarely where it belongs: on barbaric extreme Islamist ideologies. The president appropriately demanded that we “honestly confront the crisis of Islamist extremism and the Islamist terror groups it inspires” and “cut off the financial channels” that enable terrorism.

And at the United Nations, President Trump’s outstanding Ambassador Nikki Haley has been doing wonderful work pushing the United Nations to retract its biased, defamatory, anti-Semitic anti-Israel reports and activities, and UNESCO’s statements attempting to remove from Israel millennia-long Jewish sites in Jerusalem and Judea/Samaria.

Accordingly, the ZOA urges the U.S. State Department to retract and correct the defamatory, biased anti-Israel portions of its “Country Reports on Terrorism 2016” (issued July 2017), including the portions of this report that:

(3) Ignore the PA’s $355 million of annual “pay to slay” payments made to Arabs to murder Jews – and re-characterize PA “pay to slay” payments to terrorists as “reintegration into society financial packages”;

(4) Minimize Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks against Israelis;

(5) Make false and exaggerated claims of Israeli “settler” violence against Palestinian Arabs, based on fabrications by the Soros-funded discredited anti-Israel NGO Yesh Din and the UN (which also based its anti-Israel allegations on the same discredited sources);

(6) Treat Jerusalem and Judea/Samaria, etc. as separate entities from Israel; and

(7) Ignore and minimize Qatar’s state sponsorship and funding of terrorism.

ZOA also praises and thanks Congressman Peter Roskam (R-IL) for writing a letter to Secretary of State Tillerson, pointing out and asking the Secretary to amend the “demonstrably false assertions” in the 2016 State Dept. Country Report on Terrorism. Among other things, Rep. Roskam wrote:

“At the highest level, the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership incites, rewards, and, in some cases, carries out terrorist attacks against innocent Israelis. In order to effectively combat terrorism, it is imperative that the United States accurately characterize its root cause – PA leadership. . . .”

“The State Department report includes multiple findings that are both inaccurate and harmful to combating Palestinian terrorism. This report wrongly insinuates Israeli security measures on the Temple Mount and a stalled peace process as key forces behind terrorism. Most egregiously, it portrays the PA as innocent peacemakers far removed from being the source of terrorist activity. . . . This assertion [that explicit calls for violence are “rare” and the PA “leadership generally does not tolerate it”] is demonstrably false. The PA does not only tolerate terrorist attacks against Israelis but it also incites, rewards, and memorializes those who carry out these horrific attacks.

It is extremely disappointing that the current State Department has added biased anti-Israel language to the State Department’s annual country report on terrorism.

Conservative Review noted that “Conservative Review looked through the Obama-era State Department country reports on terrorism and found that the Tillerson-led assessment added the aforementioned anti-Israel language. Last year’s report under Obama said the Palestinians argued that terrorism is sometimes caused by frustration over ‘occupation.’ But that report was much less accusatory because it makes clear that the position is reflecting the views of Palestinian officials, and not the U.S. government. Tillerson continues to shock supporters of Israel with his pro-Palestinian policy promotion.

The new State Department should be draining the swamp and expunging the anti-Israel false and biased pronouncements of the former administration – not making them worse.

Here are some of the specific egregious false anti-Israel statements in the new State Dept. countries report on terrorism: (read more)